The Robot Operative System (ROS) has become a de facto standard for robot programming. The underwater community is also following this trend and adopting it as its main middleware.

Till now, each institution/organization has developed its own solutions to deal with the particularities of the underwater domain. This represents a waste of efforts that not only hinders the cooperation among different organizations but ultimately slows down the progress of the underwater community using the ROS ecosystem.

In view of that, we would like to take profit of the BTS event, which brings together a significant part of the marine community, to organize a workshop and gather ROS users in underwater systems. The main aim of the meeting is to discuss the adoption of conventions that can help the growth of the underwater ROS community.

On the technical side, we will put the focus on the definition of standard messages for common underwater sensors/actuators and the review of available underwater simulation tools. We would like also to promote the networking aspect of the meeting and try to establish a group to keep up with the ideas that will emerge from the workshop as well as to get to know other initiatives that are around.

If you are working with ROS in an underwater context, you sure have something to say and we would like to have you on board! You can check out the BTS main program and register as soon as possible, there are many other interesting things going on that week. Registration prices include lodging and meals for all week.

If you cannot attend but you would still like to send us a comment and/or to be informed about the outcome of the meeting after its conclusion you can fill in your contact data in the same [form](https://tinyurl.com/y7f3rulc).

* Workshop date: Tuesday 2nd of October (14:30-18:30)

* Place: Biograd na Moru, Croatia.

* BTS Registration: http://bts.fer.hr/ - Contact us if you are interested to get an early bird discount.